Publishers still missing the point on e-book prices

[CazMar]

The fact that there are so many posts on this topic- and many of them showing evidence of pricing research and some deep thinking - must give book publishers a hint as to what is uppermost in their reading market's mind. Ignoring this level of public interest and often anger would be business suicide. It took many years for the music business to settle down after the introduction of downloaded music and it is still evolving; the subscription "library" is the latest model and no doubt that will change over time.
Whatever happens the book publishing business has to evolve, otherwise they will sink into history along with abacus makers and buggy whip manufacturers!

[MV64]

Originally Posted by greencat

Tell a lie big enough and some people will believe you.

That is essentially how business in America is done now. Usually an increased cost or reduced services is done "for the benefit of our wonderful customers." I'm not sure how we got to this point, but the PR people aren't even very good nowadays. Businesses think they can do whatever they want and just say it's for our own good. That's not even brilliant PR work, it's lazy. If you're going to try and manipulate us at least try.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

No, books are a clear example of the fact that we do live in a free market. The book market (in the US) is more free than most markets.


This is meaningless distinction. Publishers sell books and words.

People read reviews all the time. But people are also interested in best-seller lists because that is also a type of review. I.e., the fact that more people bought this book than that book is some evidence of that book's merit.


I don't think that there are many "social" readers at all. Almost everyone who reads reads for personal reasons.

As for scarcity, that's part and parcel of the free market.

I respectfully disagree. We do not have a free market in books, nor has the US ever had one. Any book under copyright is not in a free market. Only the holders (and their assigns) of the copyright have a right to produce the book, under whatever terms and price they so choose. Not free at all.

Scarcity is not part and parcel of a free market, plenty is. Yes, there are periods of scarcity, but they are followed by much longer periods of plenty. Only when free market are constrained, are there prolonged periods of scarcity.

The publishing industry uses copyright as a method to impose scarcity and maintain higher prices. And to prevent futher competition, they keep extending it further and further...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

So - tell me how to find *good* quality romantic suspense (or strongly character-driven suspense) novels that are well formatted and proofread, that end well, and maybe I'll try an indy author.

Since I don't read or write those, I can't help you. I also can't help those who are too afraid to try new authors. I have the same hard time trying to find good SF, but I'm willing to experiment a bit. After all, reviews, even by trusted sources, don't guarantee you'll actually like their recommendations. Or have you never bought a book on such a recommendation and decided you didn't like it? (If so, lucky you.)

But the topic here is ebook pricing. I have a number of books that have earned good reviews, and at $2.99 a book, you'd hardly be risking much.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

But the topic here is ebook pricing, and at $2.99 a book, you'd hardly be risking much.

Even less a risk when you download samples first too. They're a great way to eliminate both poor writing and poor storytelling in one go. Although you'll still need to check over reviews to make sure the ending isn't a let down :P

[sabredog]

Some of the better ebooks I have read this year only cost me $2.99.

[spindlegirl]

Smashwords has daily uploads of new authors offering free e-books too - I've so far downloaded more in their free fiction section than I've had time to read, but I hope to read some soon so I can at least give a bit of feed back. I tend to be quick on the download button and slower reading.

I try to encourage newer authors because there are some out there with a lot of potential. And I can't complain of the free price If I don't like a book (or the grammar, editing or formatting doesn't measure up) I usually know within the first dozen pages, and will then delete it without worrying.

I even get picky with bestsellers. I tend to veer off the beaten path for newer novels and very few actually grab me to the point of wanting to buy. Favorites have actually had *repeated* purchases due to giving to a friend, reading repeatedly and losing pages, etc.... so when I love a book I invest not only lots of time but a lot of money to make a story part of my "life library".

[tompe]

I do not see why people care so much about the price. I read 50-100 books per year. I can read books I already own which I now are from OK to good or buy new books. And paying $15 per book (which was what English paperbacks cost in Sweden...) is only $1500 per year if I read 100 new books which is not so expensive for my main hobby. And now books are cheaper especially buying them as ebooks.

A bigger problem is time. What I cannot afford is to read to many bad books or start with to many bad books. That means I have to give up a good book. So I only look for new authors to try to find very good books. Books that are just OK or good I have a lot of unread at home already.

And of course the probability to find a very good book is much higher if it is recommended AND it has been published by a real publisher.

[allinhi/]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Buying used books for half list price (or less) and then selling them when you're done reading them doesn't take any space either, and it's much cheaper than ebooks. It is my hope that the publishers will eventually decide that there should be a ebook price-point that corresponds to the used paper book market, but I don't expect that to happen until most of the likely buyers of eReaders have done so and are done buying their "must-haves".

This is because a secondary market in ebooks cannot be created without the goverment agreeing to create a mechanism, using something like overdrive and some kind of license transfer (fee)? There is no incentive for publishers and authors to do this, unless they benefit, and given the small margainal costs on ebooks sales long term, once original publishing costs are recouped, each additional sale approaches pure profit. This is why publishers focus on costs for newly published books when discussing their costs. Since there is no reason to let books go out of print there is an opprotunity for pubishers to benefit for a much longer time frame. Big busines will continue to use the piracy bogeyman and the outrageously long copyright periods to print money.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Even less a risk when you download samples first too. They're a great way to eliminate both poor writing and poor storytelling in one go.

True: An author is smart to provide samples or chapter excerpts for browsers.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not see why people care so much about the price. I read 50-100 books per year. I can read books I already own which I now are from OK to good or buy new books. And paying $15 per book (which was what English paperbacks cost in Sweden...) is only $1500 per year if I read 100 new books which is not so expensive for my main hobby. And now books are cheaper especially buying them as ebooks.

A bigger problem is time. What I cannot afford is to read to many bad books or start with to many bad books. That means I have to give up a good book. So I only look for new authors to try to find very good books. Books that are just OK or good I have a lot of unread at home already.

And of course the probability to find a very good book is much higher if it is recommended AND it has been published by a real publisher.

So if you don't care about price, you won't care if we double the price of all your books? Paperbacks cost at a minimum $22 or so here, going up to say $36. Why don't you import them from Australia if price doesn't matter?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not see why people care so much about the price. I read 50-100 books per year.

I read 50,000 words/day more than 3x/week. I read 150,000 words some days. Marathon nothing-but-reading days can be 250,000 words. I remember a stretch in high school when I averaged reading 3 books a day. I'd get to school, check out one from the library, read it during my breaks in class & at lunch, check out a second book for the rest of the day, and at the end, turn it in for another book to take home. They tended to be short YA books, but I got into the habit of *always* reading. 100 pages/hour, on average; a five-minute wait at the train station is almost ten pages of reading time.

I am insanely grateful to fanfic writers who produce excellent stories in mega-epic lengths. But there aren't enough of them to keep me in ebooks all the time, so I also buy ebooks. Right now, I could probably afford $1500/year on ebooks... two years ago I could not have. $30/week on entertainment for me, that I can't share with anyone without violating a TOS, is well outside my budget for selfish indulgences.

I certainly can't afford to double that for the other two avid readers in the house. (Neither of them reads at anything like my speed.)

A bigger problem is time. What I cannot afford is to read to many bad books or start with to many bad books. That means I have to give up a good book. So I only look for new authors to try to find very good books. Books that are just OK or good I have a lot of unread at home already.

I do a lot of reading the HTML samples at Smashwords. I have standards--No more than $6 for fiction; if there's a noticeable typo or grammar error in the blurb that bothers me, I don't bother checking the sample. If the blurb has phrasing that bothers me, I don't bother reading further. I don't buy without sampling. If the sample annoys me, I give up on the book. If I read several pages of the sample and I really really want to know what happens next--I buy the book.

And of course the probability to find a very good book is much higher if it is recommended AND it has been published by a real publisher.

I'm going to enjoy watching people try to find a phrase to describe the older publishers when the new ones get more prevalent, and use many of the same methods as the Agency-pricing group. What makes a "real" publisher? Author advances? Hardcover books? Ads in Publishers Weekly?

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by tompe

I do not see why people care so much about the price. I read 50-100 books per year. I can read books I already own which I now are from OK to good or buy new books. And paying $15 per book (which was what English paperbacks cost in Sweden...) is only $1500 per year if I read 100 new books which is not so expensive for my main hobby. And now books are cheaper especially buying them as ebooks.

People care about price precisely because the cost adds up and buying a book means paying for it with after-tax dollars, that is, from the limited pool of money available after the government has taken its share.

For you and for me, the $1500 a year may not be a big dent in our budget, but to someone who earns $30,000 a year gross (and thus takes home about $23,000) and who has to pay for their own medical insurance (a low-priced family plan in my area of the country runs about $900 a month or $10,800 a year), has to feed a family of 4 (which seems to run about $150 a week or $7,800 a year), has to pay rent, which in my area would run about $1,000 a month (or $12,000 a year), and let's not forget the cost of an automobile to get to and from work -- well, you are already running in the negative.

The point is that price is very important to most people, particularly when one income is not enough.

I am sure that Bill Gates and Donald Trump could care less whether they spend $2.99 or $22.99 on a book they want to read, but for many Americans, that luxury is not real.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

So if you don't care about price, you won't care if we double the price of all your books? Paperbacks cost at a minimum $22 or so here, going up to say $36. Why don't you import them from Australia if price doesn't matter?

The point was that most people do not read 50 books a year. So the time spent must be more important than the cost of the books for most people. Of course some people read a lot and some people read a lot when they do not have much money but I think that is few people compared to the whole book market.

[Blue Tyson]

The time thing is not necessarily true. Because time wasted on entertainment in a lot of cases would be wasted on tv or video games or movies or whatever.

You think people might just be annoyed if free tv started charging, or video game or DVD prices doubled?

And for most people that read slow - if they can get 3 movies for the price of one book, and watch them all in less time, why get the book ever, if time matters?